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I am a big big fan of NewEgg in general - just bought most of my components for 2 new PC builds there this past month. BUT. I no longer will ever buy "bare" or "OEM" hard drives from NewEgg due to extremely poor packaging. If you buy a "retail" drive, it will be packaged in the retail box the manufacturer provides, and will be well protected. But if you buy a "bare" or "oem" drive from the Egg, they most often will simply throw it in a box with a strip of bubble wrap that doesn't even cover the entire drive! So the delicate HDD rattles around and bangs the inside of the box while in transit. I just RMA'd my last OEM Western Digital drive for this reason.

In my research, I noticed something significant while reading the excellent user reviews on NewEgg (as well as on Amazon, B&H, MicroCenter, etc). NewEgg has a far greater percentage of 1 star reviews on their oem or bare drives than other sellers (in this drive's case 25% of the reviews are 1 star!!!).

Why? My guess is that there is a greater failure rate due to NewEgg's shamefully poor packaging of these drives.

My advice is that you buy only the RETAIL drives if you buy them from NewEgg. I am lucky enough to live near a MicroCenter (a brick and mortar store that has even better prices on many components like CPUs than NewEgg), and I purchased a retail drive from them at a great price. It came with peace of mind too, since it was safely packaged.

ALWAYS use a disposable email address when ordering from newegg. I use them any time I order something online, and both times I've ordered from them, my disposable addresses have started receiving spam and phishing emails. (I make a unique email for each vendor, so I KNOW where the leaks are coming from) I contacted them and they swear up and down it can't be their fault, it must be ME somehow. ("your email provider must have a problem!" oh really? I run my own mailserver...) I went looking online and found several others that have confirmed this same problem because they use the same email method as I do.

NewEgg has (or has had in the past) a botnetted PC in their orders department they refuse to acknowledge and deal with. (OR they are selling their mailing list, pick your poison) This makes me a bit worried when giving them my credit card. I haven't had a problem with my card getting jacked through them though. So, just be cautious with them.

@gknight825: Same here. I've only been ordering from them for around 4 years, but they've been great. I've rarely had any issues with them. When I have had issues, they've made things right. That's all I can ask. As for spam, I haven't gotten any more than what I intentionally signed up for (Newegg promo emails).

@fearlessraccoon: I probably haven't purchased more than around 20 hard drives from Newegg in the past couple years, but all of them have been well packaged and none of them have been defective (for what it's worth, that's a mix of WD and Seagate, 7200 RPM, 5400 RPM, black, green, etc.). I make a habit of running SpinRite on every disk that I get and I have yet to get a bad one. Furthermore, I only buy OEM hard drives - not a single one was in retail packaging. A few were even refurbs. I'm sure that my experience won't be identical to everyone else's, but if they really are that bad, I think that I would have seen some of it by now.

I almost bought the 3T unit on BF for the same price (This one was $69 then), but I am askeered of Seagate due to mixed reviews. It's great if it works, but RMA for defectives incurs shipping costs, so savings disappear if you get a bad one.

I'm glad you all have had positive experiences with the HD's you've purchased from NewEgg. But the 3 of you are a small sample size. The user reviews on NewEgg are from 363 users, a much bigger sample. And 25% of them give it 1 star review.

I went to see Amazon's reviews on this drive - it is hard to sort out because they combine different capacity drives. I must admit that the % of negative reviews are similar to the Egg, so perhaps I am being unduly harsh. But how would you feel if you got a HDD merely in an anti-static bag, NOT surrounded with bubblewrap? IMO I'm making a fair criticism here.

@fearlessraccoon: My WDs from NewEgg have always been in OEM boxes and properly packaged.
Samsung likewise.
Have never ordered a SeaGate, so no experience there. It may be a function of whether the device is drop-shipped from a fulfilling house vs. warehoused @NewEgg.
If it came as you described, it would result in one holy uproar from me.

my oem drive purchased from newegg last year was been packed in an antistatic bag which was inside an OEM brown carboard box (snuggly and securely) and that small box was in a larger shipping box protected with bubblewrap.

NO complaints about newegg shipping/packaging here, and I've been ordering various items from them for a decade, too.

As for seagate drives, I've never had one fail (still have about 5 internals and 4 external seagates of various ages up to about 8-9 years old, which all still run fine).

That's right, the three of them are a small sample size. But you, as an individual, are an even smaller sample size...

If we look at the slightly larger sample size that all four of you create, we have 1 out of 4 people who've had a bad experience. You said it yourself - Newegg bare OEM HDDs have 25% negative reviews due to DOA.

Seems to me that your sample size is an accurate sample set of the population.

(for simplicity, I'm not counting my numerous successes with Newegg's OEM drives, both new and refurbs)

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Geez, why so negative?

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Too late, we all heard you!

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